Collab: CYS Correia & MsH

CYS Correia:

Mommy told me about this day, ‘school starts’ was marked on the calendar, but she never said she would leave. I didn’t want to go! I was happy with her, her hugs were warm like a blanket in the winter. She left, but I couldn’t remember hearing goodbye. She never gave me what I didn’t want, and I didn’t want to hear goodbye. I wanted to hear her read me a book, like ‘Animal sounds’. “And the cow says?” She used to ask. “Quack!” I always answered. She laughed and gave me kisses on the face saying: “My little ducky.” They had that book in school, but no one read it. It was for babies. They called each other “baby” the same I called my sister ugly. What’s the problem with babies? I know they stink but you can always put them in the other room.

One boy was making everyone cry and calling them babies after, I wanted him to stay far from me. In the park there used to be boys like him, making children cry, mommy would never let them get close. He walked towards me. “I like your hair,” he said. I thanked him, maybe I was wrong, he seemed nice, I didn’t need protection. Maybe I didn’t need mommy. He spat out his gum onto his hand and fixed his eyes on me.

* * *

She came into my mind today, it was rare the occasion this happened. When I started school, I began to think less and less about my mother. She stopped being the tree who fed the poor man, and became the decorative flower in the mansion of the rich man. As a kid, when I thought about family I thought about my parents, but after so many years away I sometimes struggled to remember their names. Family, when I thought about this word as an adult, I imagined Julie, she who carried me during tough times and carried my children. I’m sure my parents encountered the same change in their lives.

Mother was never a person who enjoyed being alone, when father was gone I couldn’t leave her alone. “A place filled with people like you, to be friends with,” I told her the day I put her in care, over twenty years ago. She was revolted by the idea, but she probably changed her mind. I don’t think I’ve seen her since that day, we talked only by short phone calls. She, of course, was the one who called. It was raining the day I put her there, it seemed like the gods were fighting and mourning over the clouds. I was so busy that day that I can’t recall if I said goodbye. Maybe I should visit her as a surprise like she used to do to me at school. I enjoyed when she did that, I was sure she would too.

Soon after my thoughts, I received a phone call-

Farewell.

MsH:

Jamie, you brought me to the "home" you echoed of...around which I could not settle my thoughts... today I am gathered as if together again in memory... and I remember well enough to pen: 

How you held my hand so seamlessly connected; Small, growing independent, though with a tremble! My high heels in step with you all the way to the mouth of the big yellow bus--where Life snipped away at our phantom umbilical.  Your Father's bracelets jangled as I reluctantly let go, seeing your countenance so contrary to these pretty fleeting chimes. A delicate squeeze of fingertips, as I always try to give... while the unknown re-introduces Itself at the gapping precipice. Why are we inclined to say He? but there it is, a shadow cast of doubt, shaped like the Grim Reaper, that Man in Black. But yes! Of course happy new experiences are awaiting you! My eye as ever seeking to reassure you, while we inevitably shift our glances across the proverbial morning dew that always seems to glisten on the very first day of school. 

And who knew, at that tender moment, that I would now most remember you as an outwardly grown man with a book childishly balanced on your head; a white football dribbled at your knee. A complete showboat! declaring with mock confidence that you would major in some kind of Kinesthetic Cosmoverbal Metaphysics! gauging if Mama would approve... Who was the "Inspira" for that?! we laughed right with you: Messi, Dumas, Hawkings, Kroos... how I loved to hear you make your own sense of our Babel-tower. Folding my arms with a smile, I though: Yes, This Boy Will Travel! And my heart blossomed to see that you were so indifferent to shoes and brands and such things that unnecessarily drag a man around when he mistakes their price tag for his own value, or worse tries to sell himself to the crowd. 

But I frown. 

Things change... every seed, I see, lands. We do not grow old, so much as gravity pulls us down till we are pressed, face to face, as it were with the ever seductive makeup and perfume of the bare ground that will embrace us all. Soon. Every last tie severed, yet somehow tied back together. You were in the end no different; tormented by the allure of Existence. You reached farther and farther away for that beauty, so elusive and incomprehensively distanced. Your Father and I so proud that you were making-your-living out there, though I know you were pained by such "unimagined" meagerness. What was it you called it? "Mere subsistance!" Why did it remind me with sadness of how untaintedly grateful you were when I'd nursed you?

If only you had need of nothing more! But no, the heart and mind wanders; the true Mother it longs to explore. I, I accept that I fade, as I must, to make way. 

When you finally stopped by, ready to start your family anew, how we rejoiced, your Father and I! For what could make a nostalgic old hen happier than such an extension of the roost? even if observed from so very far. Playful years passed. Decades elapsed. Everything repeating, exasperatingly fast. You are so tired now. I remember that look in the mirror, at the end of the day, when the last of the laundry has been put away and just there is just one little nightlight left on. Complete hush as shared fairy tales begin to mold true stories of our real characters in their own beds.

My mind is starting to wander. Back across your face. Selfishly. I see me---Not reflected. You look so tired now; the lines evidence joys and worries and blanks. So much ahead! without me.  

You've a third or maybe a quater of the years of me. No I'm confused; you have all of me. It is I who has a third of you. No, to be sure I have all of you, all I'll ever have till the end, locked in my memory. I'm failing you.

It's locked. I have lost the key.  I dread this more than any other grief or malady. 

We have shuffled to the red sign. You in turn, releasing me. My hand, bare, silent, stiff now. My face expressionless. Only my soul with its eternal maternal sense, still articulates all of this. I am sorry. I am forgetting you; and Love; and Pain, too.

A single laser point remains from me to you--- Fare well.